The Petro government approved the National Development Plan. It has some positive aspects, among which the policy in favor of the popular economy stands out, which is one of the most important emergencies in Colombia.
In this regard, there are many aspects that I do not share, but I celebrate the spirit and the vision. However, there are several issues that concern me.
The most disturbing of all the extraordinary powers that were granted to the President in that it allows him to decide the rate of the SOAT.
The value of the policy is a purely technical exercise that responds to the expected values of the coverages.
Doing populism with this will imply that the insurance will stop working and that greater costs will fall on the health system.
Although we managed to knock down some monkeys as part of the powers to create new entities by decree, others left.
The government’s appetite for bureaucracy is proportional to its desire to extract more and more resources from Colombians.
Not content with a tax reform of 27 trillion – the largest in history – he wanted a surtax on property taxes.
And as if Colombians today were not concerned about the excessive property tax charges, they approved an immediate update that equalizes the cadastral appraisal (the property tax base) to the commercial appraisals.
As a consequence, the property taxes of all Colombians will become more expensive. For many in the middle class it will be of such a magnitude that it will force them to declare income.
Fortunately, we managed to eliminate the mandatory condition of the recommendations of the “Truth Commission”. Turning that story into a national truth suppressed the political diversity of democracy.
And not because that interpretation is not valid, but precisely because it is the expression of a political sector, not of all, and we all have the right to our particular expression.
We also managed to stop the vertical integration that the government wanted to do in the gas industry, creating a new monopoly and ending small gas producers, transformers and traders.
As well as allowing agreements for the production of vaccines and biological medicines also with private companies and not only public ones, as the Government intended.
The orangutans were no doubt referring to expropriation. One, which allowed the State to seize the land in 21 days due to the owner’s refusal to sell. We detected it and reported it in time, and it sank.
Another, the one that was approved, was put in silently, without anyone detecting it, via a proposition that was not read or even discussed.
That provides for expropriation when the owner refuses to sell by analyzing productivity and converting the UAF (family agricultural unit) into a limit on rural property. That will bring uncertainty and capital flight from the agricultural sector.
And the other orangutan that almost passed but managed to stop was the so-called direct turn. It is nothing more than half of Petro’s health reform that seeks, as his spokesmen put it, to eliminate intermediaries, that is, the EPS.
Those who understand the insurance system understand that with the direct transfer the system ends, the EPS do not have anything to work with.
Those who say that the State is a better payer than the EPS are also lying. The debts of the EPS to the clinics and hospitals are clearly explained by the debt of the State to the EPS. It is easy to imagine that if the State is not capable of paying a few EPS, much less it will be thousands of hospitals.
In environmental matters, the outlook is not very encouraging. They raised taxes on alternative energy from 1% to 6%, leaving coal in better condition, at 4%. With that they questioned the sustainability of clean energy projects.
And our forest reserve areas will be handed over to the peasants in exploitation concessions. We cannot control that they do not cut down, as it will be to control moderate felling…
The National Plan was approved with multiple procedural errors. We will sue in court.
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